Twitter Updates

It's a long time since we've had an article from any columnist providing quite such a superb, albeit unintentional, exemplification as did Yasmin Alibihai- Brown in her Independent column of 17th August of the futility of engaging in arguments about whether a given politician/columnist/commentator "is antisemitic" or not.

Alibhai-Brown sets out to demonstrate why it's utterly wrong to call British Labour Party lead candidate Jeremy Corbyn "an anti-Semite".

Hilariously, the subhead, which she may not have written or approved, states

"Some of the people the left-wing hopeful has been closest to are conscientious and ethical British Jews".

It may have escaped the Indie's sub-editors that that's a po-faced politically correct reformulation of "some of his best friends are Jews".

The right sort of Jews, not those sloppy and unethical British Jews who are not his best friends. And of course as utterly irrelevant to the issue of whether an individual embraces and promotes antisemitic ideas as it was when Sir Oswald Mosley, Leader of the British Union of Fascists used it to deny that he "was antisemitic", whilst having his Blackshirts march through the streets chanting, "The Yids, the Yids, the Yids! We've got to get rid of the Yids!"

And Corbyn himself resorts to another variant of "innocent by association" in the interview with Cathy Newman in the clip above. In response to her challenges about his associations with major promoters of antisemitic ideas, Corbyn indignantly tells us that his mother took part in the Communist Party organised Cable Street demonstration against Moseley's fascists in 1936, as if what his mother did almost eighty years ago had any bearing on what he does now.

It's interesting that a very familiar group of "AsAJews" have just produced a round robin letter slamming those who raise the question of Corbyn's associations with promoters of antisemitic ideas as "guilt by association".

Yet their hero's first resort to such questions is a defence of "innocent by association."

She's particularly skilled at condemning the antisemitism she's happy to acknowledge as antisemitism ( basically, that of the far right and any that can be found amongst the Tories), whilst writing paragraph after paragraph playing the "zionists call legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and its robotic hard line defenders antisemitism".

She also plays a very nice skilled variant on the "not an antisemitic bone in his body" line (always good, since who has ever found antisemitism embedded in the human skeleton?). Alibhai-Brown's version is "if he's antisemitic, I'm a white supremacist"-- with total subtlety reminding you that she's NOT WHITE.

That's her shtick...

The real trap here is to attempt to rebut her by agreeing to play this debate as a question of whether Corbyn IS or ISN'T antisemitic.

This is a completely wrong headed approach, as it's basically an issue about what's inside Corbyn's head. As it is about the head of anyone spouting or circulating antisemitic ideas, which is being presented or felt to be best addressed through an IS/ISN'T antisemitic debate.

The Torah teaches us that we judge people not by attempting to second guess what's in their heads, but by their acts-- what they do and what they say. And Torah assumes people have free will and the obligation to take responsibility for their actions.

In fact, we've just entered a month where we're expected to review our actions and speech over the last year and put right any wrongs we've done.

Queen Elizabeth I, like so many Elizabethans, knew and understood Torah a lot better than many of today's Jews and Christians. Not surprising, because the astonishingly beautiful translations into English by Coverdale and Tyndale of the Hebrew Bible were still new and exciting. Torah language and wise counsel, was adopted into every day language, and would be even more embedded in the language and speech habits of the ordinary English people with the publication of the King James bible after her death.

The words of the Torah in English electrified both the common people and the great poets and playwrights of her day. Shakespeare is saturated with phrases and sentiments directly taken from the English translations of the Hebrew Bible of his day.

Like Shakespeare, she used the language and the thought patterns of the Hebrew bible much more than she did the Greek-originated Christian New Testament.

She is reputed to have said-- in perfect Latin-- on unexpectedly succeeding to the throne of England

This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes.

She also said, in one of her greatest speeches:

Though God hath raised me high, yet this I account the glory of my reign, that I have reigned with your loves.

I have ever used to set the last Judgement Day before mine eyes, and so to rule as I shall be judged to answer before a higher judge.

Queen Elizabeth I was faced every day with a great issue of her times in England-- were there covert Roman Catholics working, like today's Islamist entryists, to subvert English religious freedom and the Protestant direct relationship with HKBH and return it to the dire rule of the Roman Catholics?

For if those people succeeded, that would mean handing over control of the minds of the people of England to the scrutiny of the Jesuit jihadis, ever ready to seek out new heretics to burn. It would return England to being a state under the ultimate rule of the Pope, as her sister Queen Mary had done.

And one of the most heinous sets of acts of murder in the name of religious purity Queen Mary supported was the burning to death at the stake of the translators, printers and publishers of the first English translators of the Bible, William Tyndale, John Rogers and Archbishop Cranmer amongst them. Needless to say, the English Bibles were also burnt.

I think we would do well to follow her example and resolutely refuse to enter into discussion into whether Person X or Person Y "is anti-semitic".

We could only know that via a window into their soul.

We should say, as I now always do-- I am not interested in the issue of whether someone "is antisemitic" or not. We can't know what sits in a person's head. The only thing that matters is-- do they say, endorse, circulate or excuse antisemitic ideas, explanations and images?

People who do that should be called out by having the antisemitic elements they're using or recycling pointed up and condemned for what they are.

We should point out also where such ideas, explanations and images incite and stoke up hateful and irrational behaviour, regardless of what the person responsible for invoking them claims about their own motives and inner moral purity ((or the person who uses the antisemitic content).

I've found that when I do this, the astonished and righteously indignant circulator of antisemitic ideas always tries to drag the discussion back to "I am not antisemitic/Are you saying I'm antisemitic/Honest Jeremy Corbyn, The People's Money Printer does not have an antisemitic bone in his body.

I always refuse and insist on pursuing the issue of pointing out the antisemitic content and its contribution to validating and stoking antisemitism.

This is an effective way to combat the most common straw man argument being used to defend the circulation of antisemitic ideas, posing as acceptable antizionism, in the UK today.

67. Claim: “In each year I was mayor, anti-semitic attacks [in London] declined” (Guardian, March 26; when pressed about his poor relationship with the Jewish community)

Reality: The London figures, from the Community Security Trust’s annual reports, are as follows (reports before 2003 are not readily available online):

2003: 215 2004: 311 2005: 213 2006: 300 2007: 247 2008: 236As will be seen, the number of anti-semitic attacks in London rose substantially – by up to 45% – in two of these years.

Hosting extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi

84. Claim: “All I knew about Qaradawi when he came was that the Sun had praised him as a true voice of Islam.” (Newsnight 4 April)

Reality: Livingstone had actually been furiously lobbied by liberal, Jewish and gay groups not to host Qaradawi. A Labour Home Office minister, Fiona McTaggart, pulled out of the City Hall event with the hate preacher, urging Ken not to meet him and saying that “a perfectly good cause had been hijacked” by Qaradawi and his supporters. The shadow home secretary, David Davis, asked Ken not to give Qaradawi “the oxygen of publicity.” When Qaradawi touched down in the UK, the Sun in fact proclaimed: “The evil has landed.”

The video clip I've included with this post shows that so many of Livingstone's present aims, especially that of establishing London as a city-state go back to the Trotskyist programme of the Socialist Action group coterie who were his highly paid enforcers when he was Mayor, and whose Simon Fletcher is the head of his campaign team today.

What a stain on the record and reputation of the Labour Party. I heard Miliband parroting Livingstone’s election promises to slash fares and restore the EMA on BBCR4 a few days ago, claiming he’d be the best Mayor for London. As they say, the fish stinks from the head.

At 3:35 into this clip, you'll hear Ken Livingstone make the astounding anti-semitic claim that Orthodox Jewish laws of religious conversion are racist and that they originate from the same late nineteenth century German racist exclusivist ideologies that culminated in Nazism.

You wait apparently forever for some unambiguous evidence that, yes, Ken Livingstone really has uttered anti-semitic statements, despite his pious denials, then three eye-popping bits come along at once.

Thanks to the hard work of Joseph K published as a comment on this post yesterday, here's a transcript of the context and the key words used by Livingstone in the course of chairing this 2010 Press TV broadcast reviewing a polemical anti-zionist book on zionism:

Is not the problem here that when Zionism was conceived of back in the 1880s, the world was one that accepted racial division… The Germans talked about anyone of German blood, even if it had been a thousand years since they left, able to come back. The world broadly accepted this racism at all levels, and that was the origin of Zionism – ‘every other group is racially selective, we will do it’.

We see that today in this ridiculous situation that that whereas Christianity and Islam massively goes out there to convert people to its [sic] faith, it’s very difficult to convert into Judaism. I think it’s a real problem, there’s this racial exclusiveness that has its origins in that dreadful time… 1880s, when all nations suffered from it.

As ignorantly wrong about the history he claims to be drawing on as he is about the teachings of Christianity and Judaism, Livingstone targets Judaism as a different religion that is racist and intolerant, unlike Christianity and Islam. His “history” of the conversion rules of Judaism being based on nineteenth century German racial exclusivism is a total and malign fantasy calculated to represent Judaism and Nazism as having the same roots. Equating zionism and Nazism are central features of anti-semitic anti-zionism.

Making Judaism difficult to convert to goes back to Talmudic times, not long after the period of Rabbi Hillel and Jesus of Nazareth and although the Rabbis made it more difficult in the centuries following the Jewish Diaspora, has nothing to do with the rise of political zionism in the mid to late nineteenth century.

Judaism is not interested in race. A child is Jewish if he or she is the child of a Jewish mother, whether he or she is black, like the Jews of India, Ethiopia and many parts of the Maghreb, or pale skinned, blond haired and blue eyed, like some of the Jews of Poland and Russia, frizzily dark haired and curved-nosed like many of the Jews of Germany, or has the characteristic skin colour and eyes of the children of Jewish converts who came from Japan and China. Anyone can convert to Judaism, provided they are not the children of a sexual union ruled illicit in the Torah, such as an incestuous union. All shades of zionist movement (of which there are many, both secular and religious, socialist and economically conservative), have always accepted that anyone born or converted according to Orthodox Jewish rules is eligible for citizenship of the Jewish state, wherever they live in the world.

Religious zionism however goes back to the first Psalms of the first period of Jewish exile to Babylon, which yearn for the return by the entire people to the homeland, both the land of Israel, and Zion-- the City of Jerusalem. They have been sung and chanted by religious Jews everywhere in the world as part of the prayers which accompany every meal they ate for almost two thousand years and continue to this day. Every orthodox Jewish wedding going back to the earliest exile days has begun with an invocation to "Let us go up to Jerusalem" taken from the Song of Solomon and other Hebrew Bible texts

Each and every Orthodox Jewish prayer service is suffused with repeated scriptural readings and prayers which long for the return of the whole people to”our Land” and to Jerusalem, which the Jews have always prayed to be granted “speedily and in our days” and continue to pray for today.

Small groups of religious Jews, including some of the most renowned Jewish Rabbis of history such as Maimonides and Rabbi Yitzchak Luria continued to make pilgrimages to and even settle in various areas of present day Israel and the West Bank, particularly the Old City of Jerusalem, Safed and Hebron going back many hundreds of years. The birth of modern political zionism is manifestly not a copying of the emergence of proto Nazi racism in the 1880s, but a complex series of movements which first started being articulated in the wake of the Enlightenment and the 1848 revolutions.

Modern political zionism first became a mass movement not because of German ideology but because of the rise of new post Enlightenment state-organized forms of persecution of assimilated and unassimilated Jews alike across European countries from republican France to Tsarist Russia. But all were in their different ways rooted in Jewish scriptures and traditions of study leading to action.

There was always a minority orthodox religious current in political zionism that sought to persuade Jews to return to Zion so that they could more fully observe Jewish religious practice, including the Torah religious obligation to live in the land of Israel and the range of religious commandments that can only be observed in Israel and Jerusalem.

Livingstone however strives to smear zionism as a monolithic racist movement explicitly derived and descended from the very same racially exclusivist roots as Hitler’s Nazism. That's anti-semitic enough. But then to smear the ancient Talmudically rooted laws of conversion to Judaism as having the very same roots originating in the same period is on an altogether more malignant form of anti-semitism, falsely smearing Judaism as racist and the racism concerned sharing its origins with Nazism.

That fits very comfortably with the ideologies of the current Iranian regime which Livingstone has professed himself to be so much as in opposition to.

Yesterday, a post on Harry's Place featured this video of Livingstone addressing a meeting of Londoners to organize against the EDL.

He claimed to be speaking against ethnic and religious division, but his speech airbrushes out the inheritance of Judaism, seeking to place the Jewish Talmudic Sage of Israel, Rabbi Hillel in what he refers to as what we like to think of as Palestine, by which he in fact means the present day state of Israel where Hillel lived and studied.

Livingstone then talks of Jesus, likewise of Ancient Israel, also without mentioning that he was an observant Jew who regarded himself as such, as coming along several hundred years later than Rabbi Hillel. In fact, they were virtually contemporaries drawing on identical Jewish scriptures and traditions and there are far more similarities in their religious teaching and practice than there are differences. Livingstone claims that Jesus of Nazareth never once uttered a single sentence of intolerance of anybody. He seems not to have come across these quotations of the words of Jesus from the Christian Gospels which include some of those most at variance with rabbinical Jewish teaching :

“Then shall he also say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting FIRE, prepared for the devil and his angels.”

“It would be better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he was cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’

“For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 3and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.”

“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

The implications of both this talk and the Press TV one, is that while Christianity to some extent, and particularly Islam (based centrally on one small extract from Mohammed's final sermon, and ignoring some more problematic issues with different interpretations of Mohammed's teachings as a whole by some groups of its followers) are exemplary in teaching racial tolerance, Judaism is not, and incorporates Nazi-style racism in its very conditions for joining the religion.

If we do want to look for some shocking examples of religious bigotry born of ignorance and malice which Livingstone decries in his talk to the Unite meeting, we need look no further than Livingstone himself speaking on Press TV just a year earlier and in this talk.

There are many who swear that Livingstone is not anti-semitic, notably Ed Miliband, who famously declared, albeit meaninglessly, that he "does not have an anti-semitic bone in his body". Actually, I am inclined to believe that were there three or four million Jewish voters in London and Israel owned the oil supplies of the western world and the Islamic countries had none, he might be regularly heard courting Jews and actually learning something about Judaism. Maybe.

In fact the question of whether Livingstone "is" anti-semitic or not is not as relevant as the fact that he chooses to use anti-semitic tropes and smears for political purposes,just as he is currently uttering the expression of believers' piety for the Islamic prophet Mohammed, "peace be upon him". Only in the case of his anti-semitic utterances, his reasons for doing so are malign and utterly discreditable, and over the last few years they seem to run very closely parallel to the anti-semitic views and eliminationist "ideals" central to the politics of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime.

Hilary Smith, Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign coordinator, was quoted by The Guardian as saying that the Co-op "has taken the lead internationally in this historic decision to hold corporations to account for complicity in Israel's violations of Palestinian human rights. We strongly urge other retailers to take similar action."

The Co-op has fallen over itself to announce that, no, they're not actually boycotting Israel, you understand. Just any Israeli companies that deal with produce from not just the West Bank, but any from over the Green Line. So that will include all the wines from the Golan Heights, and matzos and other religious goods baked or made in the Old City of Jerusalem but also all the produce that's exported from Gaza. And of course all the produce which Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights produce.

You see, Palestinian Arab farmers are completely dependent on the high-tech logistics and technologies of the Israel-wide exporters like Agrexco, Mehadrin and all those other companies the Co-op's decided to boycott for the fast processing, refrigeration, air transport, EU certification and marketing. Without those companies exporting their produce to the UK, guess what? Those Palestinians will lose money hand over fist, if they're not driven completely out of business, by the loss of their currently very efficient Israeli exporters. There aren't any other local non-Israeli companies they can turn to. Try Jordan or Egypt? Not a chance.

Here's the viewpoint of a Gazan woman producer whose business and family was hit by the closing of the route to Europe via Agrexco after the Israelis shut the Keren Shalom checkpoint after an outburst of Hamas terrorist action.

Um Hajjar Al-Ghalayini, 46 years old, owns half an acre of sandy Gaza land that produces two tons of strawberries every season. Since her husband died two years ago, the crop is the sole means of support for her nine children, mother-in-law and widowed sister, so every one of the bright red berries counts.

Last year, she had no choice but to sell her produce to the local market. That filled the Gaza markets with fruits and vegetables to the benefit of consumers, but for growers like Um Hajjar it was a disaster. Her earnings dropped by more than half and the family had a tough year economically. This week, as Israel took another step in easing its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, Um Hajjar delivered her strawberries to the Kerem Shalom checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border, their first leg of a journey to the more profitable markets in Europe.

“Now I can say that things are getting back to normal, if not on the right track,” she told The Media Line.

Just last week in London, Livingstone declared himself against boycotts of Israeli goods and services at a meeting with Jewish Londoners. His Deputy Mayoral candidate running mate Val Shawcross proudly declared herself a member of the Co-operative Party.

The Co-operative Group is formally affiliated with the Co-operative Party which although nominally independent is an organization whose sole party political link is to the Labour Party. Co-operative Party election candidates stand for election as Labour candidates.

So, apart from Livingstone and Val Shawcross, there's a long list of 29 Co-operative Party MPs, who include many who are usually supportive of Israel and strongly opposed to boycotts. Those MPs include Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger, Stephen Twigg and Mike Gapes amongst others. And quite a few of them are London Assembly members, too, like Nicky Gavron and Murad Qureshi.

Are they in favour of boycotting the produce of Palestinian farmers? Do they think kosher wines from the Golan Heights and matzos baked in the Old City of Jerusalem should be boycotted?

Will the Labour London Assembly members be pressing for Palestinian and Israeli produce exported by Agrexco, Mehadrin and the other companies fingered by the Co-op to be banned from the GLA's premises?

"We will not finance any organisation that advocates discrimination and incitement to hatred."

The right to freedom of speech underpins the values of a democratic society and individuals and organisations should be free to express their views or beliefs. However, 99% of customers who participated in the review supported the bank's decision to withhold finance from those extremist organisations that advocate not only discrimination but hatred.

Can Livingstone, Val Shawcross and all those Co-op MPs and London Assembly members let us know whether they support the Viva Palestina project of collecting funds which are given to Hamas regime officials? Can they also explain to us how they are satisfied that the Co-op Bank is not contravening its own policies in allowing itself to be used to collect and pass wads of used banknotes to and through Hamas, which has a stellar record of suppressing free speech and inciting hatred of Jews and Israel, not least through its own Charter?

If they think the money is just going to charitable work and is untouched by the Hamas hate machine, what are the processes they have used to monitor that?

Oh, and by the way, that's bankers in the spotlight again, isn't it? Only somehow, I can't quite see Ed Miliband getting up on his hind legs to fulminate about this at Prime Minister's Question Time, can you?

On Tuesday 24th, there was an open meeting organized by the London Jewish Forum, backed and co-organized by the Jewish Leadership Council, at which Ken Livingstone spoke and answered questions from London's Jewish community. about his Mayoral bid and his past and present views.

The introduction given for Livingstone by the meeting chair Adrian Cohen, the very aimiable non-elected Labour loyalist who chairs the LJF, came across as an astounding piece of straight advocacy. He spent over five minutes presenting every possible positive piece of information he could dig up to show how positive and supportive Livingstone is and always has been towards the Jewish community. The repeated controversies and tensions were alluded to in the briefest of euphemisms. It was in contrast to the introduction he gave at the equivalent meeting for Boris Johnson, which, although friendly, warm and suportive, did not compare, did not amount to advocacy, and was nothing like as long and gushing.

Here's a YouTube clip of Adrian Cohen’s gush

Adrian Cohen's introduction confirms the case I’ve made here. What’s supposed to be a genuinely representative body for the whole Jewish community is now controlled and unacceptably biased to serve the political priorities of a Labour Party/liberal left and Peace-Now oriented unrepresentative group of millionaires, billionaires and party activists who do not reflect the political outlook of the Jewish community as a whole.

In the case of the London Mayoral election, it's as if they set out to do everything possible to window-dress Livingstone’s image, airbrush out and explain away his long established record of Jew-baiting and invoking anti-semitic allusions to attack Jews he doesn't like, and present him as a much misrepresented warm friend to the London Jewish community.

I don't think Adrian Cohen himself is a part of that inner group. He has honourable intentions, and like some other supporters of the present direction, may well have believed that he should do everything possible to avoid presenting a hostile or aggressive Jewish community face to Livingstone, and that his role was to help the audience take on board that Livingstone should not be regarded as a pantomime villain, and the fact that his record does include some positive actions towards the Jewish community recognised. There was an alternative, of course, which was to be polite and welcoming, to acknowledge some of the few high notes of Livingstone's relationship with the community when Mayor and then act as a facilitator.

It does say something about the dangers of an inward-looking largely non-elected politically highly compatible insider group holding the reins of access to dialogue between the Jewish community and local and national government that he could consider as acceptable an introductory speech instantly labelled by audience members other than myself as "a Party Election Broadcast", "ridiculous" and "unbelievable". Those were all spontaneous comments I heard from others I'd never met before who walked downstairs or stood outside with me after the meeting.

In my view, it represents a sort of political myopia which can be paralleled with that of Livingstone, except that his is malign, where theirs is misguided and unjustified, given their status should derive from genuinely representing rather than trying to manipulate the views of the wider Jewish community. Above all it springs from an unrepresentative and largely unaccountable group being able to take decisions about how to deal with challenges to the Jewish community, and opportunities to influence policy without having to subject their plans to scrutiny. Behind that, they've a shared belief that, at best, they know what the community wants, or at worst, they know best and it's a utopian fantasy to operate any other way.

There are those who take the view (and I'm told that it's a view amongst some of those who ran this meeting) that Livingstone will win the London Mayoral election, and it's therefore important to have a Jewish community group who can speak to Livingstone rather than further promoting the widely perceived view of the organized Jewish community being hostile to him. But in my view, that's a self-serving and highly misguided argument, based on an either-or choice of two extremes. It would have been perfectly possible to have a policy of engaging with Livingstone and inviting him to meet the Jewish community, whilst adopting at least the same level of stringent neutrality to him as a candidate as would be expected of a broadcasting service. In a very close election, being seen to have been leaning over backwards to present a highly controversial candidate in the best possible light is totally unacceptable for a supposedly whole-community body.

In the course of the discussion in the video clip at the head of the post, there's a question asked about why Livingstone’s so called “apology” to the Jewish community included the astounding statement that Jews are a people, not an ethnic group or a rellgion. The response by both Adrian Cohen and by Livingstone was that this was what the Jewish Leadership Council and London Jewish Forum strongly pressed him to write, so he wrote it. In other words, not only was the ‘apology” not his own sentiments, but Adrian Cohen and his colleagues openly acknowledge their role in helping draft it. Adrian Cohen appears to see the statement as perhaps the unfortunate consequence of his attempts to explain to Livingstone the nature of Jewish peoplehood, but it does not account for Livingstone having written that Jews are not a religion and are not an ethnic group.

Again, I find it difficult to stress sufficiently how utterly out of order this bit of partisan spinning and lobbying is for a whole Jewish community representative body to have indulged in, and how utterly cynical it shows Livingstone to be when in pursuit of votes.

Livingstone consistently presented himself as a mild-mannered friend to the Jewish community, in favour of a two state solution, against suicide bombing anywhere, and ahead of his time in seeing the way to Middle East peace before the Jewish community and Israel.

You'll hear in the clip at the head of this post Livingstone's repeated assertions that he "doesn't agree with" the extremist hate preacher Qaradawi's strong support of suicide bombings and killings of Jews of every age in Israel.

But consider this. At least two young British Jews were murdered in Israel since the Hamas campaigns of bombing buses and stabbing lone Jews took off.

Shmuel Mett, a Mir Yeshiva student about to be married, was stabbed to death walking through the Old City back to his Yeshiva in Jerusalem circa 2007.

Yoni Jesner, a promising 19 year old university student spending the summer on a Bnei Akiva youth movement visit, was murdered in a bus bombing in Tel-Aviv.

Many London Jews knew one or both of these young men personally.

Bnei Akiva is the largest and most popular youth movement of the mainstream Orthodox and Yoni Jesner was a well loved and admired young leader in the movement.

Shmuel Mett was the son of a former teacher at the Hasmonean High School, and studied at the Mir Yeshiva, which is the most revered and prestigious of the great Charedi Yeshivas in Israel, where many strictly Orthodox and mainstream orthodox young men from London choose to spend a period of study.

As you can hear on the clip, Livingstone was repeatedly pressed about his embrace of Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s hate preacher who advocates suicide bombings and murders of Jews in Israel as a religious obligation.

But look at what he said at the meeting when repeatedly pressed to give an assurance that he would not be inviting Qaradawi or any other hate preachers to London again if elected Mayor:

“I won’t ask Qaradawi to drive the 210 bus”

That’s how aware of and sensitive he is to London’s Jews, and how seriously he takes their feelings about Israeli suicide bus bombings.

And in case you think I'm making too much of an unfortunate foot-in-mouth moment, Livingstone expressed amazement at what he said was the audience's "obsession with Qaradawi. He also said,

Livingstone carefully avoided saying anything about any other hate preachers, which he was repeatedly questioned about, gave no undertakings, despite being repeatedly urged, not to invite or welcome more of them, and maintained his line that he knew nothing but good of Qaradawi when he invited him. And he's still unwilling to accept the repeatedly and widely documented record of Qaradawi's misogyny and homophobia, as well as his anti-semitism should mean he revises his original opnion to one of condemnation.

The wish to improve the reach of the 210 bus route, by the way, exercises many in London’s most orthodox Jewish communities, because it’s the nearest route to a direct connection between Stamford Hill and Golders Green, the two largest centres of Charedi Jews in London. Only so far, it involves having to get off the bus and change at Finsbury Park Station.

If anyone has any doubts about what a totally dishonest performance the whole thing was, here's my transcription of what Livingstone actually said– with a degree of passion and intensity of feeling that was wholly absent fromTuesday’s performance– about his real feelings about Israel, at the Trafalgar Square Gaza rally in 2009.

Let’s send a message directly to the Israeli government: if you think you can win votes by the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian men, women and children, you are wrong.

That is what is happening. In an attempt to outflank the even more abominable Netanyahu, they are prepared to unleash this terror.

And this has to end. When we campaigned here and many of these faces—Tony Benn, George Galloway and many others, were here in this square were here again and again to demand an end to Apartheid, demand justice for black South Africans. And that was crushed in just over four decades.

The Palestinians continue to suffer now into a seventh decade of oppression and near-slavery.

What we see in Gaza is a ghetto. A ghetto in which people cannot achieve their potential. A ghetto in which death rains down. This is obscene.

And if it was any other conflict, world leaders would be queueing up to denounce it.

But there’s a double standard at work. And that double standard is wrong.

I heard Gordon Brown denounce Apartheid year by year by year.

I want him to denounce the oppression of the Palestinian people. I want our government to say, “If you behave like savages, we will not send an Ambassador to Israel. We shall be withdrawing our Ambassador. We shall be convening a meeting of European Union leaders to say, “Why should we tolerate the importation of goods grown on stolen land, whilst the people dispossessed from that land look on from the camps where they’ve been incarcerated for over sixty years. “”

In the same way that Apartheid was doomed to fail, the attempt to deny the Palestinian people their right will fail as well, because it’s an injustice that screams out to be rectified.

And although so many world leaders seem to be frightened to condemn the Israeli government, when I did my radio programme this morning, the calls supporting Palestine as opposed to Israel were three or four to one in favour of justice for the Palestinian people.

Here in this square, that is London’s central square, know this: that Londoners by a vast majority want to see an end to the oppression of Palestinian people. They want to see justice for Palestine. This city recognises that.

I think we need to say, we will not tolerate year by year of this oppression.

Don’t complain when young men launch their rockets, when that’s all you’ve left them the right to do.

One of the most revealing aspects of the dishonesty of Livingstone's performance becomes apparent if you look at his body language on Tuesday's meeting. His whole LJF performance comes across as that of a bored machine politician. There's no passion in his voice. Look at his body language. His facial expressions are bland, but his hand gestures are dismissive, constantly flipping and brushing away. He sits as part of a solid phalanx behind the tables, like a man who's most at ease behind the platform barrier of an old-style party machine.

Contrast that to the obvious passion in his facial expressions and his voice when he's ranting on in Trafalgar Square with his real political convictions about the Israeli government as the equivalent of the South African Apartheid regime and the supposed enslavers in camps and ghettos of the Palestinians for the last sixty years.

And here's another contrast-- a clip of Boris Johnson answering questions at the equivalent London Jewish Forum meeting just a week earlier. Boris chooses to stand and engage with the audience. His hand gestures reach out towards the audience, and his facial expressions show him relishing spontaneously knocking his own official and a fellow Tory London politician--"the Councillor from Barnet" as well as enjoying some opportunities to make jokes at Livingstone's expense.

Livingstone has rightly said that the Mayoral contest isn't about electing a chat show host. But it is about electing a Mayor who seems genuinely interested and engaged in interacting with people outside the party machine, who responds with more than just the entirely predictable line, and who seems ready to acknowledge their own shortcomings and say openly when their own administration isn't serving the voters well enough.

Make your own judgement between these two candidates as to who's more engaged and responsive to the what the Jewish community says it's concerned about, and who's more concerned to explain to that community why their perceptions are mistaken and their concerns about anti-semitism and hate preachers aren't worth worrying about. And consider also whether the way the meeting with Livingstone was conducted really enabled Jewish Londoners to press Livingstone and get real answers to his attitudes to hate preachers and taking their concerns seriously.

By the way, there's one thing that both the London Jewish Forum and the Jewish Leadership Council deserve huge credit and applause for. That's the quality of the spreads they provided for both the breakfast meeting with Boris Johnson and the meeting with Ken Livingstone. I don't know which kosher caterer they hired, but the food was good enough to have been served at an upscale wedding reception. And perhaps it's only at a Jewish community event that a free spread of that quality would be served in abundance for all comers.

In the summer of 2009, Ken Livingstone was pitching to be selected as Labour's candidate for London's 2012 Mayoral election. It was very helpful to reinvigorating his then has-been public profile that he was invited to guest-edit the September 21st issue of the New Statesman, the UK's leading left-wing weekly. No such opportunity was given to his main opponent for the candidacy, Oona King, a Blairite former MP who was defeated in Bethnal Greeen, a constituency with a high Muslim electorate by George Galloway of Respect in the 2005 General Election. Respect and Galloway targeted her support for the invasion of Iraq, in a campaign which repeatedly harped on her Jewish ancestry and sloganized Islamist themes of support for "resistance" against British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So haw did Livingstone choose to make use of the opportunity the New Statesman gave him?

He made it quite clear, as the clip above shows, that his aspiration is to make London an independent city-state, with himself as its direct ruler.

But surprisingly, he chose to make the centrepiece of the issue his staging of a trip to Bashar Assad's Damascus in which he interviewed Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations, the European Union and the UK. From the discussion in the clip above, it's clear that Livingstone wanted to make his interview part of his portfolio of reasons why he should be selected as London's Mayoral candidate.

As the analysis below shows, Livingstone's interview was little more than a prompt role, feeding questions for Meshaal to promote Hamas' efforts to sanitize itself and sell itself to the West as just an honest plain old liberation movement, the victim of unfair smears and distortions of its record and intentions.

It was a completely uncritical interview. Livingstone did not mount any serious challenge to any of Meshaal's obviously propagandist assertions, particularly those in which Meshaal presented Hamas as taking action purely in response to unprovoked Israeli aggression.

By way of introduction to the interview, Livingstone justified it as being intended to clarify that Hamas is quite different from Al Qaeda, and that his aim was to open up the route to dialogue with Hamas by the West. He described the situation as analogous to the UK's former refusal to negotiate with Gerry Adams and Martin O'Guinness of Sinn Fein, but he did not mention that such negotiations only took place after Sinn Fein renounced armed struggle and gave up on their core political aim of using terrorism to achieve a united Ireland. In passing, he equated the leaders of Sinn Fein at the height of their terrorist campaign with Benjamin Netanyahu, the elected Prime Minster of Israel. Here's what he wrote:

In the Middle East, peace can only be achieved through discussion between the elected representatives of both the Israelis and the Palestinians - and that means Hamas, which won a big majority in the last Palestinian parliamentary election, as well as Fatah. This does not mean that I agree with the views of Hamas, Fatah or the government of Israel. Far from it: I do not. For example, I think a number of passages in the original Hamas charter are unacceptable and should be repudiated. Many observers believe that this is also the view of some in Hamas.

Yet, for too many people, Hamas as an organisation remains opaque. What they know about it is derived from a hostile media; it has no face. Most would probably think its leader is some disturbed Osama Bin Laden figure. In fact, al-Qaeda's supporters in Gaza are so hostile to Hamas that they have declared war on it.

For these reasons, I thought it important to interview the de facto leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, who lives in exile in Syria. Not every issue is clear. But at the beginning of any peace process, what matters most is engagement. Dialogue is necessary to get to clarity and mutual understanding. Sinn Fein did not answer every question at the beginning and neither does Binyamin Netanyahu today. The answers from Meshal come at a time of heightened tensions and renewed death threats against him, adding to the permanent danger of assassination bids not only by the Israelis, but also al-Qaeda supporters in the region.

I hope this interview will help to make the case for the dialogue that is needed, which I believe is inevitable. It is simply a question of how much suffering there will be, on both sides, before we get there.

The UK Foreign Office, not noted for partisan support of Israel, saw it differently. Ivan Lewis, then a junior Foreign Office Minister in Gordon Brown's Labour government, made the following condemnatory statement immediately after the interview:

Foreign Office Minister, Ivan Lewis, has responded to Ken Livingstone's interview with Khaled Meshaal (Head of Hamas) in the New Statesman.

Ivan Lewis said:

"Ken Livingstone rightly earned praise for his strong and responsible leadership in the aftermath of the 7/7 attacks on London.

It is therefore particularly regrettable that he learned the wrong lessons from history by handing a propaganda coup to the leader of a terrorist organisation.

Hamas has not only breached international law by firing rockets at civilian populations in Israel but continues to violate the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza".

Livingstone used to be a strong supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and regularly parroted its claim to be "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people".

Livingstone today is a consistent supporter of the terrorist proxy groups which are the clients of the Iranian regime, whilst being ready to condemn Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups which are the declared enemies of Iran in the struggle to lead Islamist terrorism. Hardly surprising for someone who fronted a programme series for Press TV. But it's not so often that we see him actively using an opportunity presented to him by the UK's respectable left, not to promote ideas for improving the lives of Londoners, but to soft-sell Hamas as not an Islamist terror organization dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel and to the pursuit of anti-semitic aims, but as just another nationalist liberation movement on the way to acceptance by the family of nations.

No doubt it was no coincidence that the Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece, Anas al-Takriti, promptly ran a linked propaganda piece in the Guardian on 21st September 2009, celebrating the interview and underlining the message that Hamas is no Islamist movement, but just the Palestinian national struggle against Israeli occupation, and that any impression to the contrary was just Israeli propaganda

The Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre published a detailed fisking of the interview on 23rd September 2009.

I'm reproducing their analysis below. Readers can form their own view of whether this is just more lying Israeli propaganda, or whether it shows why the UK Foreign Office chose to issue a statement condemning Livingstone's action as handing a propaganda coup to a terrorist leader.

There are plenty of people who consider Livingstone's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict irrelevant to the role he would have as Mayor. While it's true that he has no specific powers on UK foreign policy, he is able to make appointments and stage events and even open overseas offices which propagandize and materially assist overseas regimes and political movements. This is effectively what he did in relation to the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela.

Livingstone in any case makes no bones of his desire to run London as an independent city state. In this New Statesman interview, he gives one example of how he is likely to go about doing that.

1. Khaled Mashaal, head of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, was recently (September 17, 2009) interviewed by Ken Livingstone for the New Statesman. The interview, laced with vicious anti-Israel propaganda, represented the Palestinians as the victims of Israeli oppression, and aimed at Western readers, it evaded clarification of Hamas’ extremist ideology. Khaled Mashaal called on the international community and the Arab world to exert pressure on Israel, expressed Hamas’ willingness to open up to the rest of the world and sought “to establish good relations and conduct constructive dialogue with all those concerned with Palestine.”

2. Ken Livingstone, who conducted the interview, is extremely left-wing and overwhelmingly biased against Israel. He was Mayor of London until 2008 and a Labor MP until he was expelled from the party in 2000. He prefaced the interview by saying that peace could only be achieved in the Middle East through Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, which he said meant dialogue with Hamas, claiming it represented the majority of Palestinians. His questions and the way he conducted the interview were clearly biased in favor of Hamas and made it easy for Khaled Mashaal to market his ideology and policies to British readers.

3. Throughout the interview Khaled Mashaal used the soft rhetoric familiar from his and other Hamas spokesmen’s interviews with the Western media. Hamas spokesmen express their willingness for a sovereign Palestinian state to be established within the 1967 borders and to cooperate with the international community, obscuring or concealing the movement’s ideology, which seek the destruction of the State of Israel and openly adopt the option of terrorism. When speaking to Palestinian audiences, Hamas spokesmen make their true positions clear, as was made evident three days after the interview.

4. The interview was criticized by the British Foreign Office. Ivan Lewis, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, expressed regret at the line taken by Livingstone, saying that “[i]t is...particularly regrettable that he learned the wrong lessons from history by handing a propaganda coup to the leader of a terrorist organization” (British Foreign Office website, September 20, 2009).

The main points of the interview

5. The most telling questions were the following:

i) Why do you think Israel is still imposing the blockade on Gaza?

Livingstone blatantly exaggerated “the difficult humanitarian situation” in the Gaza Strip, claiming that it was being “blockaded” by Israel, and that the Gazans were trapped in the largest jail in history. He asked Khaled Mashaal what part the United States, the European Union, Britain, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority played in the “blockade,” and Mashaal answered that it never would have succeeded without the “collusion of regional and international powers.” For the blockade to be lifted, he said, international law and the basic rights of the Palestinians had to be respected, including the right to live with dignity and free from persecution. [Note: Khaled Mashaal asks for international law to be respected while heading a murderous terrorist organization which systematically violates international law by deliberately killing Israeli civilians and which does not hesitate to brutally attack the Gazan civilians who oppose its rule.]

Photos and reports from the Gaza Strip do not support Khaled Mashaal’s bleak descriptions.

ii) What are the ideology and goals of Hamas?

Khaled Mashaal represented the Palestinian people as victims of the “colonial project called Israel.” After a long description of Palestinian suffering, he said that Hamas was struggling to end of the “occupation” and restore “Palestinian rights,” including the “right” to return to their homes.

[Note: When speaking to their Palestinian target audiences, Hamas spokesmen make it clear that by “rights” they mean the establishment of a Palestinian state in all of Eretz Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.]

Livingstone asked if Khaled Mashaal was “committed to the destruction of Israel.” Instead of answering a direct question, he said that “What is really happening is the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel; it is the one that occupies our land and exiles us, kills us,... We are the victims, Israel is the oppressor, and not vice versa.”

He claimed that the issue of recognition of Israel was an excuse, because Israel refused to recognize the “rights of the Palestinians,” who were the victims of Israeli “oppression.” iii) Why does Hamas support military force in this conflict? Khaled Mashaal referred to military force as the “option” used by the Palestinian people because “nothing else works.”

[Note: At no point in the interview did either Livingstone or Mashaal make it clear that by “military force” they meant lethal, indiscriminate terrorist attacks including rocket fire and suicide bombing attacks targeting Israeli civilians. However, the word “terrorism” was never mentioned by either Livingstone or Mashaal.]

He claimed that the Palestinians preferred to resolve the conflict with Israel through peaceful means. He claimed that if the “occupation” were to end and the Palestinians were able to “exercise self-determination” in their “homeland,” there would be no further need for the use of force.

[Note: That is, if Israel were to evaporate of its own free will, as Mashaal demands, there would be no need to employ “military force,” i.e., terrorist attacks, against it...]

Mashaal added that the nearly 20 years of peaceful negotiations had not restored “Palestinian rights.”

[Note: He was careful not to mention that the “peaceful negotiations” were accompanied by mass-casualty suicide bombing attacks in the major cities of Israel. The objective of the attacks, led by Hamas, was to sabotage any possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement by killing as many Israeli civilians as possible.]

iv) Do you wish to establish an Islamic state in Palestine in which all other religions are subordinate?

Mashaal said that Hamas was a “national liberation movement” which saw no conflict between Islamic identity and its political mission. He claimed that Hamas’ first priority was to end the “Israeli occupation” of the Palestinian homeland [i.e., to destroy Israel] and only then would the Palestinian people define what type of government the future Palestinian state would have.

In a statement clearly intended to please Western audiences, he said that Hamas did not believe Islam could be imposed on people, but that Hamas would campaign, in “a fully democratic process,” for “an Islamic agenda.”

[Note: Representing Hamas, which has enforced a totalitarian regime on the Gazans, as planning to employ the democratic process, is an absurd fabrication meant to mislead the Western target audience. The nature of the Hamas-style “democratic process” is all too evident to the residents of the Gaza Strip, who are personally experiencing Hamas’ imposition of Islamization on all facets of their lives.]

v) Was Operation Cast Lead (“the bombing and invasion of Gaza,” according to Livingstone) the [Israeli] response to repeated breaking of the ceasefire by Hamas and the firing of rockets into southern Israel?

Khaled Mashaal claimed that Hamas “fully abided by the ceasefire” between June and December 2008, while Israel only partially observed it by not fully opening the crossings. He also claimed that toward the end of the ceasefire Israel “resumed hostilities.”

[Note: A deliberately incorrect representation of the facts. During the six months of the Hamas so-called “lull in the fighting” the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip fired 223 rockets and 139 mortar shells into Israeli territory, most of them during the last six weeks. The lull arrangement, which was systematically violated by the Palestinian terrorist organizations, expired with the announcement made by Hamas and the other terrorist organizations that it would formally expire on December 19, 2008. Once the announcement had been made, Hamas and the other organizations began a series of rocket attacks against Israel which peaked on December 24, when 60 rockets and mortar shells were fired, most of them by Hamas, at the Israeli cities of Sderot, Ashqelon and Netivot, and other towns and villages in Israel’s western Negev. On December 24 the Palestinians opened fire, and not for the first time, at the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings, through which supplies flowed from Israel into the Gaza Strip.

[Note: Those important crossings between Israel and Gaza Strip have always been a preferred target for Hamas and the other toes.] In addition, Khaled Mashaal made no mention – and Ken Livingstone was careful not to pressure him– about the ongoing rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip which disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians in the south between 2000 and 2009, the basic cause underlying Operation Cast Lead.]

I think Tony Blair was the best PM this country has had in the last 50 years, and I certainly won’t be voting for the Tory candidate for the London Assembly for my area, the repulsive, arrogant Brian Coleman, so I’m not a tribalist Tory, or indeed any other sort of Tory. The vast majority of votes I’ve cast since I was 21 have been for Labour candidates. But I won’t be voting for for anyone endorsing Livingstone.

I voted for Boris Johnson in 2008 and here are the things I think he’s achieved that have made a big difference to me:

No Council Tax rises for the whole-London part for the whole 4 years he’s been Mayor. Under Livingstone, they rose every single year by socking amounts. And as my work pension is around £1,000 a month, that’s made a big difference.

No Congestion Charge imposed on West London, which Livingstone was set to do. That would have cost me £8 or now £10 every time I visited my mother (who had advanced dementia)– and on my income it would have made a difference.

Drinking abolished on Tubes and buses by Boris as one of the first things he did after being elected. As an older woman, I find drunken louts particularly repulsive and intimidating, and especially so in the confined area of a Tube carriage. I’ve really noticed the difference that’s made.

Extension of the bus pass to being able to travel on it even first thing in the day. As I most usually use mine to get to exhibitions and galleries when they first open and so avoid long queues, that’s hugely added to my ability to afford more of the blockbusters.

Ending of the stream of Jew-baiting and divisive gesture politics which Livingstone ran throughout his time as Mayor, including branding the Board of Deputies of British Jews as an arm of Mossad, the insults to the Jewish reporter, the hugging and kissing of Qaradawi who strongly supports suicide bombing of my family members in Israel, moderate wife beating of Muslim wives and the murder of gays everywhere. Ending of the need to endure Livingstone’s stream of defiance, faux-naive “he’s never said anything homophobic to me”, out-and-out lies and equivocation around his defence of such outrages till they’ve come right back onto almost daily prominence because of his candidacy.

Ending of wasting of our Council Tax money on gesture-politics festivals and events which enabled Livingstone to pour money into the maws of far left and Islamist groups and their shills in the name of promoting cultural diversity and equality. That includes the total waste of money on an event called “Simchah on the Square”, supposedly a celebration of Jewish culture which the Jewish community never asked for and which was not a “simchah” in any real sense of the word.

Ending of wasting of our money on such matters as: totally futile legal challenges to the Labour government, of which Livingstone still boasts; the notorious freesheet distributed to every London home, boasting of his achievements and the relentless “cult of personality” branding of his mug on almost every poster and visual produced by the Mayor’s office.

Ending of the use of our tax money to pay huge unwarranted sums to give jobs and huge payoffs to his Trotskyist cronies in Socialist Action and other far left and “community activists”whose main talents consisted of their tendency to dish out still more of our money out to their buddies whilst making loudmouth statements about their speaking for the black and ethnic minority communities of London. Lee Jasper was just the tip of the iceberg. Livingstone’s chief of staff in his campaign is Simon Fletcher of Socialist Action, so it’s clear enough what will follow if Livingstone gets elected, except that this time, he’ll be supporting the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime instead of the black radicals of Brixton.

Boris showed he had the guts and determination to get rid of Sir Paul Stephenson as head of the Met, hardly the action of a bumbling buffoon. It’s early days yet, but I think Hogan-Howe may make a difference. Including to the elimination of bribery and racism in the Met.

It’s a dead giveaway to the reliance you can place on anything Livingstone says when he invokes his own humility. You can take the rest of what he says on a par with that.

So this is what’s he’s cobbled together to try and save a few Jewish votes and particularly those of long term Jewish activists, after London’s most dedicated Labour activists have been busting a gut save the situation for the past three weeks.

Well, some people will believe it because they want to. And of course he doesn’t address the most devastating criticisms of all, about his conflation of Jews=Israel=zionism, all pejoratively. Instead, he expects us to take his willingness to put money into lighting Chanukah candles on Trafalgar Square, run a completely unsought by the community event like Simcha in the Square and be willing to turn up for some photo ops at Limmud as making what he had to say when he didn’t think he’d be reported all OK.

Livingstone contrite? Yeah, right. The language of his new JC piece reeks of mealy mouthedness and careful political side-stepping and contortions, to coin a word, electioneering underpressure.

Now Adloyada is proud to publish the first full text of the second, which is believed to predate the first by some years.

The Book of Old Guardian Chronicles
Chapter 1
And was it not told, that in the days of the mighty CyrusPScott, he that succoured those of the Exile of the Tribe of Judah that sojourned in the City of Man-chesta in the land of the Mighty Imperial Empire of the Guardian, that he chose as a wise counsellor the Man of Scientific Renown and Learning, the sage Counsellor of the Hebrews of Man-chesta, Chaim ben Weitzman?

And did he not procure a meeting with the troubled King George the Fifth and his ministers and generals, of the land of England, which paid tribute to the Mighty Imperial Empire of the Guardian, saying, Lo, I have heard that ye lack the precious oil of acetone, without which your brave warriors die day upon day in the Wars of the European Nations, even unto the last man?

Now, lo, here is a mighty and wise man of the tribe of the Hebrews, named Chaim ben Weitzman. If it pleaseth the King, send for him, for surely he will give the King and his household true counsel even in the matter of the precious oil of acetone, which no man hath yet found a way to procure, except by the arts of the cursed Germanim with whom ye are at war?

And King George and his counsellors sent for Chaim ben Weitzman, and spake unto him, saying, our brave warriors die day upon day on the battlefield, for we have no precious oil of acetone to make mighty thunder against the war engines of the Germanim.

And Chaim ben Weitzman said unto them: I am the King's true servant, and also the Lord has spoken through the Emperor CyrusPScott, who hath sent me to you in your time of need, because he is the Guardian of Israel and knoweth that the hearts of we of the Tribe of Hebrews yearn to return to our Promised Land, which is Israel, and not Palestine.

And I will depart and return unto your King's majesty when I have taken counsel of the Lord and made through His guidance precious oil of acetone which needeth not the arts of the Germanim.

And lo! He returned many months later to the Emperor CyrusPScott, and said, the Lord hath blessed my endeavours and I have cruses without number of the precious oil of acetone which I will give to King George. And now, will not the Guardian put in a word for us with the King that he vouchsafe his help unto us in the matter of making a decree that the Hebrews and all the children of Israel that are scattered to all corners of the earth be gathered back into Israel?

For is not the Sultan of the Turkish Lands not now vanquished in battle by the mighty warrior Al-Enby of the Brits of King George who hath taken Jerusalem and standeth at the walls of Zion?

And the Emperor CyrusPScott spake and said, the matter that thou saidest is good. And I shall write letters unto the King and his Counsellors and speak with all who may aid ye in this endeavour, for the Guardian labours to see ye and all of the Tribe of Hebrews return rejoicing to the land of Israel and not Palestine.

For of this, will come good for the Empire of the Guardian, which will wax mightily, and make good profits, and who knows that we might not yet become the Guardian of the Land of England, even in London, and our Chronicles be read by all the sages and wise men, and the soothsayers of the whole land?

And lo, he wrote letters and spake with the counsellors of the wise King. And Chaim ben Weitzman came to London and presented the King with the cruses of precious oil of acetone. And so the warriors of the King went out and with mighty weapons and a strong arm smote the Germanim. And they were sore defeated.

And the Guardian of Israel and the Emperor CyrusPScott and all the people rejoiced.

And King George spake with his counsellors and said, how may we reward this Chaim ben Weitzman, for he hath aided us mightily in this war, and saved the lives of multitudes of our brave warriors. And the Emperor CyrusPScott hath counselled us that Chaim be Weitzman now wisheth with his people of the Tribe of Hebrews to return unto the Land of Israel not Palestine. And mayhap we have made promises to the Tribe of Ishmael and Abdullah, that cometh from the land of Arabia, but yet wisheth for the Land which they call the Land of the Arabs. But are we not minded to give a decree that permitteth this Chaim ben Weitzman and his Tribe of Hebrews also to return to the Land of Israel not Palestine?

And King George had mighty counsellors, wise in the ways of forking the tongue and doubling the cross, and they said unto him, mighty King, may we not send a letter unto the greatest merchant of the Tribe of the Hebrews with words of favour and blessing for the return of them unto the Land of Israel not Palestine and yet also make promises unto Abdullah and Faisal that also they shall have the Land of the Arabs? For are we of the Empire not wise in the ways of making promises that bind all unto us, but delivering them into strife amongst themselves that enables us to extract their precious oils and much else that doeth good unto us?

And the King saw that their words were wise. And lo! A letter was sent unto the great Prince Rothschild, the mighty merchant of the Tribe of the Hebrews that set out what the counsellors had said, and is it not known unto this day as the great Letter of Balfour, which is read with great rejoicing by the Hebrews of the Land of Israel not Palestine, and cursed by the Land of the Arabs, and the Tribe of the Palestinians, and all that are of their camp?

Chapter 2

And after many years and sore troubles, there arose new Emperors at the Guardian that knew not the heart and mind of Emperor CyrusPScott albeit they knew his name, and spoke of being his true inheritors, though in truth they were sworn in heart and mind unto the Empire of the Marxistim, the Sovietim and the Egyptians and all that paid the Sovietim tribute. And of these Emperors, are not the deeds of the Emperor Pet-er-Preston and his counsellors told in the Second Book of the Chronicles of the Guardian?

And now arose the Emperor Rus-Bridga who spoke with careful counsel of great craft, but knew the Guardian of the Sovietim sent out mighty tributes of gold which were sent out to counsellors and scribes, even unto counsellors that were of the Scribes of the Guardian of London, that they might win the hearts of the people of the Kingdom of the Wise Queen Elizabeth unto the cause of the Palestinians not Arabs, for there was much oil to be gained for the Sovietim and also influence on the hearts of the peoples of the world.

And the Emperor Rus-Bridga said, our conscience troubleth us sadly. For do we not feel that we have made this sad thing come to pass, that the Letter of Balfour was given unto the Hebrews through the counsel of the old Emperor CyrusPScott, and we are cursed sorely for it by the Sovietim and all that follow the God of the Marxistim, the BaalMarx?

Now let us therefore deal wisely with these Hebrews that say they are of the Land of Israel, and let us seek the favour of the Marxistim and the losers of the vanquished tribe of Marxistim, for the tributes of the land of the Sovietim are passed, but there is much tribute and may good things that come from the new Empires of the Arabs and of the Tribe of Ishmael.

And he took Seamus, and Ben Whitaker and many others that were skilled at selecting very craftily and with twisted intent from the Chronicles and they and their scribes wrote much evil about the Land of Israel. And the Guardian of London began to prosper with the tribes of the Marxistim and the Princes of the Funds of the Sovereign Wealth were mightily pleased.

But the Tribe of Hebrews in the Land of Israel were sore vexed, and sent many letters and sent scribes that wrote, behold, in the Chronicles is not the truth written of this matter? And lo, you cause our name to stink amongst the Nations of the World. And thou surely knowest that thou publishest vile lies that cause the name of the Guardian, which was once proud, to stink in the land with the curse of anti-semitism?

And the Emperor Rus-bridga and all his scribes said unto the Tribe of Hebrews, now surely we are not cursed with anti-semitism, which is a fearful curse. For we speak only of the evils of the accursed zionism which is not anti-semitism. And lo, have we not appointed the Hebrew Jonathan ben Freedland, the son of a scribe of the Jewish Chronicles, who led the Habonim in his youth, who is a prophet who knoweth and proclaimeth his own genius, and sayeth that our Chronicle of the Guardian publisheth not anti-semitism? And hath not he proclaimed freely that the Guardian is not anti-semitic?

And all of the Guardian were of that counsel, and the hearts of much of the Hebrews of the Kingdom of the Wise Queen Elizabeth, and of the Land of Israel were mightily troubled, and said, what may we do against these slanders and evil decrees that are written against us by these false scribes of the Guardian of London?

Yet, mayhap, there were amongst the Hebrews them that had followed the ways of the Soviets and bowed before the BaalMarx, and some who had received gold, rich praise, chairs in the great academies of renown, and fine robes from the Marxistim, and the coffers of the Arabs and the Marxistim-Palestinian Warriors and their allied warriors of the Marxistim-ANC, even their mighty heroes Man-Dela and Joe, son of Slovo, of the warriors of Unkonto na Sizwe.

And there were also some of them that believed that they had mighty consciences, and were seers, some had not not got over the days of their bar-mitzvah celebrations, and some saw themselves as courageous speakers and warriors, lone voices crying in the wilderness, even though they stood verily amongst thousands that daily uttered the same words in their mouths and wrote them in their letters, which had been written for them first by the Soviets in the Chronicles of the accursed Emperor Stalin and the exiled Prince Trot-ski and their fathers, even unto the days of the Huntsmen of the Okhrana, even the AsAJews of Old of the Band of Yevsekstia and the Bundistim.

And these Hebrews formed Tribes, and they called it them the Tribe of the AsAJews, the Tribe of Jay-Street and the Guardians of the Conscience of the Jews of Independent Voices. And there was a very small tribe that called themselves Neturei Karta, that were but a few hundred in number, that said, all these Hebrews of the Land of Israel are not Jews, but we alone are the true Jews

But in truth, the numbers of all the AsAJews were sore small, and most that were of the Tribe of AsAJews were also enrolled on the list of the Tribe of Jay-Street, and the Guardians of the Conscience of the Jews of Independent Voices.

And they spoke mightily and often in the halls of the Nations and their scribes wrote weekly and even daily in the Chronicle of the Guardian, proclaiming, Lo As A Jew, I say that the Land of Israel is not a true Land of the Hebrews but a Land of Zionists, and it is a thing of the Imperialists, and it hath done and doeth daily vile evil unto the Palestinians, who sit in peace under their fig trees, and trouble the Hebrews not.

And the doings of the Zionists are evil, even as the ways of the accursed Nazim and the dogs of Botha, of the vanquished tribe of the Apartheidites. And, lo, the Land of Israel must be wiped from the map of the nations, and he that sayeth not so shall be accursed.

And the hearts of the many true Hebrews that knew the truth were troubled, and they knew not what to do.